Lesson video

Hello.

I'm Mr. Hutchinson, and welcome to our History lessons.

We're learning all about prehistoric Britain.

And then our last lesson we learned about an amazing discovery about when humans discovered metal.

We learned all about the Bronze Age and today's lesson.

We're going to be learning about another metal that humans discovered, and that is iron and the people in Britain at this time were known as the Celts.

So our big question is going to be who were the Celts and why did they use iron? Let's take a look at our lesson structure.

First of all, we're going to ask when the Iron Age was, then we're going to learn about the Celts and we'll learn about how the Celts lived in Hillforts.

And finally, we'll have our end of lesson quiz.

So our first question When was the Iron Age ? let's go back to our trusty timeline and looking at the last 10,000 years, we can see the zero CE is just here.

That Palaeolithic era is just ending towards the end of our timescale.

Sorry.

It's not the last 10,000 years.

It goes a bit further back than that.

Whoops, the Mesolithic era follows on from the Palaeolithic era and then near Lithic era just after that.

So when did the, the Neolithic era start, can you remember from our last lesson, when was the Neolithic era, well done? If you said 4,000 BCE, now you might have said 6,000 years ago.

And if you did.

Great work you're right, but remember 6,000 years ago is the same as 4,000 BCE, 4,000 years before the year's era.

when we start counting.

So what about the start of the Mesolithic era? When was that? When was the start of the Mesolithic era.

Well then, if you said 10,500 BCE or 12,500 years ago, it's the same because zero CE was about 2000 years ago.

We learned that after the Neolithic era, we started the Bronze Age when we discovered the Bronze Age.

So when was the Bronze Age? Can you remember when the Bronze Age started, give it your best guess if you're not quite sure you can say it out loud.

Well done.

If you said 2,500 BCE or 4,500 years ago, and in today's lesson, we're going to be learning about the next Age after the Bronze Age came the Iron Age, and the Iron Age lasted for about 800 BCE to about 43 CE.

So it's crossing over that CE time.

So it's about 800 years before the Common Era before the Years Era.

And it goes into about the year 43 CE, which is when the Romans came in the year 43CE, the Romans invaded Britain.

So that was the end of the Iron Age.

So let's see if you can remember when the Iron Age was, was it 4,000 BCE to 2,500 BCE? Was it 800 BCE to 43 BCE? Was it 10,500 BCE to 4,000 BCE? Or was it 2,500 BCE to 800 BCE? Choose A, B, C or D make your choice now three, two, one quick, real quick make your choice.

Well then if you said B was the Iron Age was 800 BCE to 43 CE.

So it was about 3000 years ago, roughly 3000 years ago to about 2000 years ago.

So if we take a look again, all of those different dates, you might've recognised some of them and that's because these dates all of these dates correspond to different ages.

I just flushed them up that by mistake.

He didn't see them because now I'm going to ask you to fill in A, B, C, D, What were these different ages? All of these periods are ages in prehistory.

So what are the different periods? Write out A, and then write whether it's the Mesolithic era or the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age or the Palaeolithic Era you need to choose.

And see if you can remember what each of those periods corresponds to.

This is a difficult challenge because they're all muddled up, but give it your best shot.

See if you can remember.

Great.

Let's have a look.

So we've got the Neolithic Era from 4,000 BCE to 2,500 BCE.

The Iron Age that we looked at before from 800 BC to 43 BC the Mesolithic era from 10,500 BC to 4,000 BC and the Bronze Age from 2,500 BC to 800 BC, well done.

If you've got all of those correct, because I put them in a different order and it's all the different ages that we've studied.

So I'm really, really impressed if you've got all of those.

And if you didn't, please, don't worry, it was difficult challenge.

What you can do is just pause the video and edit your answers so that you remember when these different periods were.

So let's learn about the Celts.

The Celts is the name that we give to a group of people.

And it's the group of people that were living in Great Britain during the Iron Age So we learned that the beaker people, the beaker culture spread out and travelled to Britain and the Celtic culture was another culture around Central Europe at this time.

And again, spreading around central Europe for about 1000 BCE.

So about the same time that the Iron Age begins little bit before the Celts are spreading around, and you'll see that they travel across to Great Britain, including the Island of Ireland and spread into Great Britain.

So for about 1000 BCE, the Celtic people migrate and and trade across Europe and into Britain.

They're trading with people they're migrating and moving.

Just like the beaker culture.

They bring with them knowledge and what are the pieces of knowledge that they bring is how to make Iron.

And so we learn how to make Iron from this Celtic culture.

So Iron, this is, some Iron ore, this is what Iron looks like when it's taken out of the ground.

And iron is actually really difficult to make.

It's more difficult to make the Bronze.

It's quite difficult to grind down.

You need a few different ingredients as you smelt it, to make sure that you make the correct metal.

So it's quite difficult to make.

And it's also not really as good as Bronze.

Bronze is a better metal sharper it's easier to melt down.

It's easier to mould.

However, the materials that we need for Bronze, especially Tin you'll remember, well, see if you can remember, how do we make Bronze? What do we need to mix? What we smell, which two metals, Copper and Tin and Tin was quite difficult to find, especially it's quite difficult to find Tin.

And so, although Bronze was a better metal there's loads of this Iron ore lying around, it's very readily available.

And so iron becomes a more common metal, and that's why it's called the Iron Age.

So we're still using Bronze in this period.

We're still using gold.

Those metals are still being used, but most things are being made out of Iron because there's plenty of it around.

So can you complete this sentence? Although iron was weaker than Bronze, the Celts made more tools and weapons out of iron because.

Pause the video and finish that sentence, write out the full sentence and finish it off.

Let's see how you did.

I'm going to show you how I finished the sentence.

I wonder if your ideas were similar to mine.

So I wrote, although Iron was weaker than bronze, the Celts made more tools and weapons out of Iron because the materials were more readily available.

They were readily there.

They were there and ready to be used.

So the Celts are making iron weapons.

They're making iron tools.

They're growing bigger and bigger.

Their settlements are getting bigger and bigger as they're making more and more tools and they can farm more and they can clear more land.

And they're starting to develop into these villages.

They have round houses, different round houses.

They might start to have leaders, big farming locations with lots of animals.

And so we're starting to get big villages, but the Celtic people actually start to create these things called Hillforts.

And I'll show you a picture of an, an existing Hillforts.

This is taken from Salisbury.

The town of Salisbury is where Salisbury first sort of emerged from.

Now these villages that the Celts were making, they very often got built upon the Hills.

And that was because the Celts wanted to make their villages more difficult to attack.

If you are somebody living in prehistoric Britain, and you've got loads of sheep and goats, and you've got loads of maybe jewellery that you've made and weapons that you've made and tools that you've made.

Another tribe, another village might look at you and they might have lots of weapons.

And they might think, Hey, instead of farming, all of this great and, and doing all the hard work, why don't we just go over to that village over there with our swords and we can attack them and we can take all of their things away.

And that's what started to happen.

The different tribes started attacking each other.

And so to make that more difficult, the Celts built their villages on the top of Hills, After they built all of their things on the top of a Hill, they build big walls around them.

And that's why it's like a Fort.

They built a big wall that man, if another tribe wants to try and come and attack, you they'd have to run up a Hill and it would really make them tired.

And then they'd be met by a wall.

It would be difficult to get in through the wall.

And if you had a bow and arrow, then you could shoot the bow and arrow and you could stop them from attacking you that way.

So, but during this time, tribes were raiding each other to try and get them their valuable resources.

So there's three prehistory.

There's been these big changes, Seamus aren't moving around anymore.

They've settled.

That means that they've got all the food they need and all the things they need just where they are.

But it also means that they're more vulnerable to attack because other tribes will know where they are.

If you're not moving, you're always in the same place.

They don't know where you are.

And once they discovered these metal weapons that could easily go and attack them.

So as these tribes starts develop, we get big tribes, big groups of people that sort of all team up in different areas.

And I'd like you to look at this map because this shows some of the main tribes in Britain.

You can see at the top here we've got Brigantes and also down here into the Pretanol.

We've got Parisi over here.

Corieltrauvi here and Catuvellauni.

Gosh, that's quite difficult to say isn't it.

Some of these are real.

Cause some of these real tongue twisters, they're quite take a bit of time to read them and see if you can pronounce them.

I'm finding it a bit tricky.

You might be better than me.

I can see that.

There's the, I see new tribe here.

The Demetae tribe here over in Wales.

We've got their Silures tribe Have a look at that map.

Can you find where you live, put your finger on where you live.

You might need a grownup to help you tell you where you live, or you might already know them up where you live, but put your finger on it.

Do you know where you live? If you can find where you live, then you can look at that map and you can see which tribe you belonged to.

And you could write out a sentence.

I would be a member of the, so I would be a member.

I think I would be a member of the Regnenses tribe tribe, or maybe the Trinovantes tribe.

Cause I'm sort of, I live sort of here in London.

So maybe it's sort of in between the Atrebates, Regnenses and that, and Trinovantes tribe.

So maybe I'd be member of one of those tribes.

I wonder which one, which, which of those tribes would you be a member of Now? You'll notice that this is actually, this is a map that's drawn.

If you look at the top here, it says it's drawn by, somebody called Ptolemy.

You can just see that Ptolemy and that this map was made, about 150 CE, about 150 years, after Years Era.

And it was made by a Roman and that's because the Celts didn't write anything down in the Iron Age times.

They didn't really write, they didn't write anything down.

And so we don't have that much evidence at the Iron Age, we have the artefacts.

So there are some artefacts, especially some of the tools that they made, but we don't have any other evidence, the clothes that they wear.

For example, we're not 100 percent sure because they've all rotted away.

we don't have any written evidence.

And so we have to do a little bit of guessing work really, but the Romans, when they arrived in Britain, they did write down what the Celts were like.

And they gave all sorts of amazing stories.

Like the Celts used to apparently they used to strip naked to go into battle and they cover themselves in blue paint and they'd be screaming and quite chaotic in the way that they battled with all sorts of axes and heavy weapons and big long swords.

And that's what the Romans said.

Now, maybe the Romans were exaggerating maybe because they were attacking.

They were trying to say the Celts were a bit more animal like they really were, but that's the evidence that we have to go on from the Romans, because during the Iron Age the Celts didn't actually write anything down.

So here are a few statements.

I'd like you to choose the statement.

That's true in each case, and you can write it down.

So do we know a lot about the Celts because they wrote a lot down or is much of what we know about the Celts from Roman writing.

Choose, which is the correct sentence and write it down.

Okay.

Let's see if you were correct.

So you should have written down that much of what we know about the Celts is from Roman writing.

So well done.

If you've got that one, right? If you didn't neat line through it and you can write out the correct sentence so you can remember the true facts.

What about this one? The Celts fought each other and raided the resources in the villages or the Celts lived peacefully alongside each other.

Pause the video and write out the correct sentence out of those two.

Let's see if you're a right, which sentence should you have written out? It's this one, of course they were raiding each other.

That's why they had to build the Hillforts.

They didn't live peacefully alongside each other very much.

It seems otherwise they wouldn't have had to build these big Hillforts.

And we wouldn't find so many Iron Age weapons.

Only Iron was used during the Iron Age.

Bronze , Gold and Iron were all used during the Iron Age , which of those is correct.

Write out the correct sentence.

Let's see if you're correct.

Bronze, Gold and Iron were all used during the Iron Age.

We most used Iron because Iron was more readily available, but Bronze and Gold would still be, which still have been used in places.

And last one, Celtic Hillforts and the basis for some of the towns and cities that are still present today.

We don't know where Celtic Hillforts used to be.

Write out the correct sentence.

Okay.

Let's see if you're correct.

Celtic Hillforts are the basis for some of the towns and cities that are still present today.

We saw a photo from Salisbury of one of the Hillforts that that was the basis of Salzburg and around different major towns and cities.

You can see evidence of the Hillforts that were first bullt thousands of years ago during the Iron Age.

That's the end of today's lesson and you've worked extremely hard.

And you've learned all about a new age, the Iron age, and this group of people, the Celts that were living in Britain and lived in Britain until the Romans arrived and still actually kept living in Britain, alongside the Romans and with the Romans we've gone forward.

thousands of thousands years in history and you have a much better understanding of the Island that we live on and how the different people and the different ideas all arrived into great Britain.

In our last lesson and the next lesson.

Sorry our next lesson will be the last lesson.

That's what I mean.

So in the next lesson, which we, have final lesson, we're going to be learning a little bit about some of the major stone monuments like Stonehenge.

One more lesson to go.

You've already learned so much.

I'm really impressed with how clever you are when it comes to prehistoric Britain.

So keep it up well done.

And I'll see you in the next lesson.